


Miracles

by Yuppu



Category: Escape Plan (2013)
Genre: Character Death Fix, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 13:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1430539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuppu/pseuds/Yuppu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javed miraculously survives the escape from the Tomb and he intends to make good on his promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jesuisherve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesuisherve/gifts).



> Hey, they didn't show me the corpse, no corpse no death. So there you have it, Javed is not dead.

The moment he regained consciousness, Javed did not understand.  
He thought he had died.   
He saw the mouth of the gun and barely heard the shot before everything went dark, how could he possibly be alive?  
Suddenly he became aware of the tube up his nose and of the IV in his arm, of all the wounds he could feel, every single shot he took for the sake of stalling the guards.  
How was he alive after all that?   
His agitation sped up his pulse and before he could even think of that, the doctor marched in to check on him. _The_ doctor.  
And now Javed started to understand _how_ and to wonder _why_.  
"Why?" He croaked, his throat dry and his voice cracked, possibly because of several days without speaking. How long was he out, exactly?  
"You were instrumental to the downfall of the Tomb. I found you and I thought you were dead, but you were still fighting. I still can't understand how you survived a clean shot to the head after seven to the chest, that's not even resistance, that's a miracle.”  
Javed snorted and half-gagged because of the tube. "Take it out." He demanded, pulling weakly at the intruding thing, and the doctor complied. He didn't even know his name, he thought to himself.  
"Technically you died, you know?"  
Javed froze, trying to understand what he was saying.  
"Your heart stopped for almost a minute while I was operating. I thought I lost you, I almost called it but then you came back. I guess you could take it as a sign to just give up on your past life and start over."  
Javed stared blankly at him and suddenly it hit him. He died and there was nothing for him. No blinding lights, no heaven, no nothing. No sign of the Allah he clinged to so desperately in the Tomb.   
"How could I be alive for a miracle if there is no God?" Javed protested, suddenly plunged in an uncertainty he had never been faced with.  
The doctor looked surprised of his outburst. He had seen a lot of patients lose their faith, but he never expected the leader of the Brotherhood of the Tomb to be one of them.  
He soldiered on from the first day just because he had his faith to cling onto. He was a man of his faith and that guided him and made him a man who could survive and almost thrive even in those inhumane conditions.  
But what of him survived the escape plan?

Javed started to regain himself slowly and got more interested in his own well-being.   
He learned he had been in a coma for the past two months.  
He learned about the bullet still lodged in his brain - apparently removing it would have done more damage than good.  
He learned his body needed to readjust after the period of immobility, started a cycle of physiotherapy and pulled some favors to start anew.  
New identity, new documents and as soon as he was on his feet, he took off.  
He wanted to find Emil again. He promised he'd be with him and wanted to make good on that promise.  
The only problem was that he had no idea where to find him. He managed to track down Ray with the help of the doctor and he got an appointment with him at the agency under his new identity.

Ray did not catch on right away. But as soon as Javed's sunglasses came off, Ray needed to sit down to believe his own eyes.  
"Javed..."  
"I look different in a suit, don't I?" He joked, sitting down to get back to eye level.  
"I thought you-" Ray cut the sentence short, with a pang of guilt looking back at his course of action. He had no idea Javed could have survived that, he was bleeding out, he must have been shot multiple times while stalling for him and Viktor.  
"Doctor said I actually did. For a little less than a minute. He found me just in time, apparently."  
"I'm sorry, I had no idea-I would have come back if-"  
"You don't need to apologise, Ray. Coming back for me would have killed us both. And possibly Emil. No need to feel bad about anything you or him did, in fact, you two saved us all. Including the doctor, he patched me up and sent me on my way and still I don't know his name, can you believe it?" He chuckled, trying to relieve the tension a bit.  
"What can I do for you, Javed?" Ray finally asked, figuring he would not have gone through all the trouble of finding him just to show he was alive.  
"Do you know where I can find Emil?" Came clean Javed.  
Ray took a deep breath. "As a matter of fact I don't. And you should know... he is not Emil. He is Viktor Mannheim. Emil Rottmayer was a cover."  
Javed gave a slight nod, his stomach twisting painfully into knots. "I see... and you don't happen to know how to contact him, do you?"  
"That I can do, yes, but I can't guarantee he'll respond right away, he's... been keeping himself busy, it seems."  
His wording made Javed cringe. Emil- no, not Emil, _Viktor_ \- was keeping himself busy after the Tomb.  
It probably would have been fair to think he was justifiably worn out after getting out, but part of him clinged to the word he gave.  
He promised he'd be with him and he hoped Viktor still remembered and still thought of him.  
"He gave me a phone to contact him in case of emergency. I haven't heard from him in a while. Don't call, text him. Don't use names, if he can make it, he'll tell you where and when, or so he told me when he gave this to me..."  
Ray took the phone from a locked drawer in his desk and placed in front of Javed. He needed it much more than him.  
Javed pressed his lips together and reached for it, almost hesitant.  
He could feel himself closer and closer to keeping his promise, but he started to seriously think about it.  
What if Viktor had moved on? What if he did not mean it, what if he just wanted to give some hope to a dying man?  
"Thank you, Ray." He stretched a smile, trying to swallow down the fear that was overcoming him.  
Ray half-shrugged and shook his head. "I should thank you, Javed. This is the least I can do."

Javed spent several days in a hotel room, the burner face down on his bedside table. He could not bring himself to send the damn text.  
He always forced himself to the point of picking up the phone, but he never managed to push himself further than that.  
One night, after tossing and turning for hours, he decided this could not go on.  
He grabbed the phone and put together a text that would not give away his identity.

_Urgent. Need to meet ASAP. Get back at me soon._

He chucked the phone in his suitcase and tried to go to sleep, but he could only think of the damn phone and ask himself how and when Viktor would answer. He passed out from exhaustion at dawn and woke up a few hours later.  
Still no answer.   
Javed took a deep breath and tried to go on with his life, hoping, waiting.  
Every other minute he was reaching for the phone or staring at it, in hope an answer would finally come.  
Finally, three days later, it buzzed in his pocket.

_Chico's garage, Santa Clarita, fri 9pm. See you there._

Now Javed had a day and a place. He just needed the guts to show up.

Javed got to Santa Clarita on friday morning and he spent the day in a nervous wreck in his motel room.  
At half past eight he still could not bring himself to venture out of the door.  
Seven minutes before their rendezvous, he finally kicked himself up and started walking to the garage.  
The closer he got, the more he wanted to return to his room and pleaded for his faith to come back so he could rely on something, anything, that would keep him strong.  
At the last corner before the garage, he saw him. He shaved the goatee off and it looked like he dyed his hair or maybe his memory was playing tricks on him. He looked older. He looked tired.   
Javed asked himself if it really was the case to just walk up to him and announce he was back from the dead.  
He envisioned a punch and a bitter anger and a barely contained contempt.  
He felt a ring in his ear as his head started spinning, but he pushed one foot in front of the other until he saw his own hand reaching for _Emil_ 's shoulder.  
The look on his face left Javed at loss for words.  
There was such utter amazement and unspeakable surprise in his eyes, and maybe Javed was just imagining things, but he distinctly saw a glint of happy relief.  
Javed stretched a smile and tried to keep himself together. "I promised I'd be with you. Now I am."  
All air left his lungs as Viktor gripped him tight with an incredulous moan. He was squeezing too hard, Javed could feel the scar tissue on his chest being pulled so hard it might just tear up again, but he didn't care. He hugged back tight, just to feel it was real, just to make sure it was not a dream turning into a nightmare of deceptions.  
He was holding the man who drove him crazy in every way in the Tomb. He was there, as a free man, with him.  
Every bicker, every fight, every _actual_ fight, every kiss he'd refused and each kiss he'd given in to, every touch, every half grin and smile and provocation, everything they had that kept them living and not just surviving inside of the Tomb was making the pain of that clasp just fade away.  
"I thought I lost you, I thought you were dead..." Viktor whispered, his voice breaking.  
Javed cradled his head in his hands and hushed him softly, grateful that in that back alley nobody could see them, two grown men on the verge of tears, broken and barely mended after the single most damaging experience in their existence.  
It took Javed a few minutes, before he could resolve himself to speak. "We can't stay here, I have a room five minutes away..." He said, though he was reluctant to be the first to break the contact.  
Viktor barely nod his head and sighed deeply, before loosening his grip.  
He held his hand all the way, just like he did before they lost each other for the last time, and let Javed lead him to the motel.  
Neither of them bothered to turn on the lights, they just kicked off their shoes and lay down on the bed, facing each other.  
That was the most unusual position they'd ever found themselves in, at least together.  
They just looked at each other in the dim orange light coming from the street in front of the motel.  
Viktor caught a glimpse of the scar on the side of his head and he barely held it together.  
"Tell me how."  
"The doctor found me half dead and stitched me up."  
"You were shot." He replied, with a glance at his scar.  
"Eight bullets. He pulled out seven."  
Viktor's face clouded and he dared brush his thumb over the scar tissue. "But-"  
"If he pulled out all eight, I would not be able to move on my own. Or talk. Or send a text pretending to be Ray." Javed tried to talk him down, stretching a hand to find his neck, feeling for his pulse as if to make sure it was really happening.  
"He knew before I did..."  
"He knew before you did, because I knew where to find him. And I knew his real name and not yours."  
Viktor looked away, but he pushed his forehead against Javed's neck with a small sigh.  
"I'm not accusing you, I know you could not say a word of it in that hellhole. I would have done the same." Javed ran his fingers through his hair, as if, in the darkness, he deemed those small gestures acceptable.  
He was too ashamed of himself to mention how he prayed every day in the Tomb because his desire to be with Emil was becoming stronger than his faith and he was even more ashamed to admit that even though he had lost that faith, in the daylight he would still have felt like he needed to pull away from him and be decent.  
It was so deeply ingrained in him that he was already wondering how to keep this going without ever calling it an actual relationship. He was scared. He was scared that after all, Allah did exist and was only testing him to see if he ultimately sinned and wasted the miracle he was given. But if he did exist, why would he torture him like that? He never was a man of virtue. He never aimed to be one and he did not expect to become one after his miraculous brush with death.   
How could Allah be so forgiving and generous to give him a second chance but condemn the purest feeling he ever felt just because of who he felt it for?  
"What's wrong?" Viktor's voice brought him back to reality, before the warm roughness of his palm rubbed against his badly shaven jaw line.  
"I am." He instinctively said, in a pained whisper.  
The other man frowned and cupped his head in his hands. "Javed, you are not wrong..."  
"If I am not, why do I feel like I am? Why do I- why am I scared?"  
"Because you are human and because you lost me once already and I can't even tell you how terrifying it is to think I might lose you again. It's human. It means you feel."  
Javed tried to piece the rest together without telling Viktor how awful he felt and how he ached to hide and cover up all of it.  
He was scared to death that if he admitted to himself why he went looking for Viktor, everything would crumble and fall and it would have been all his fault.   
He pushed his forehead against Viktor's, butting against it lightly. "How does the man who said the most stupid things also say the wisest?"  
Viktor couldn't help but smile. "Love brings out the best and the worst in a man."  
Javed felt his heart swell up and just curled up closer to him without a word.


End file.
